When people speak of East Asia today what do they mean exactly? Is East Asia merely a geographical construct? Is it a cultural unit made up of nations that share roots in a common premodern civilization? Or can we identify a certain historical experience that defines an East Asia that is distinctly modern? In this course, we will explore these questions by studying the histories of Japan, Korea and China from 1600 to the present.
We will ask what we can learn not only by comparing the individual pasts of these countries but also by seeing them as parts of a larger, structurally linked whole. We will begin by looking at how, during the age of modern imperialism, these countries each differentiated themselves from the premodern East Asian world order according to their different yet overlapping experiences of empire, colonization and semi-colonization. We will then trace how these new identities have been subsequently reformulated within the global framework of the Cold War and specifically through these countries’ differing experiences of communism, the rise of American hegemony and (in the case of the Koreas) national partition.
Finally, we will conclude the course by considering what “East Asia” has come to mean in the two decades since the years 1987-89, a pivotal turning point in the histories of Japan, the Koreas and China as well as for the region at large. This is a continuation of HISTORY 204; however that course is not a prerequisite and no previous background on the subject is required. Two lectures and one discussion section each week. There will be a midterm and final exam.

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